Mark Billingham - Buried

Carol Chamberlain was not in the right mood. ‘You should go and see someone,’ she said.

‘What, like a psychiatrist?’

‘That as well, but I’m talking about your back. Shut up about it and go and see a doctor.’

After the chat with Jesmond, Thorne had walked back to Becke House and run the two newest names on the list through CRIMINT. Billy Campbell was reported to be attending a drug and alcohol rehab centre in Scotland. Wayne Barber had finally got round to using that screwdriver and was serving life with a twenty-five-year tariff in Wakefield Prison. That left only Mullen’s original two, and Jesmond had made it clear he thought they were both a waste of time.

Thorne had started to feel like he was wading through treacle. He’d grabbed a sandwich from the canteen and walked back up to the Major Incident Room. Wondered whom he could possibly call up and complain to while he ate his lunch.

He’d known ex-DCI Carol Chamberlain for a couple of years. She’d been brought out of retirement in her early fifties and recruited for the Area Major Review Unit, a small team comprising previously retired officers, put together to take a fresh look at cold cases. They were known – not always affectionately – as the Crinkly Squad.

Chamberlain was anything but crinkly.

Thorne had always known that she could be spiky, that she was not a woman to get on the wrong side of, but the year before he’d seen a blackness seep and spill from her; a slick of poisonous rage every bit the equal of anything bubbling and slopping inside himself, which had threatened to envelop them both. Once its acrid shadow had lifted, there had been enough light for them both to see clearly, to get what was needed, but there had been a price to pay. If it hadn’t been for those few terrible minutes of madness – never spoken of since – they would not have found the man responsible for setting fire to a young girl. And, though Chamberlain would never know it, Thorne’s father might still be alive.

She was a friend, but like most people whom Tom Thorne respected, she frightened him a little.

‘Maybe I should call back later,’ Thorne said. ‘Obviously you’re busy worming the cat or doing a crossword or something.’

‘Cheeky bastard. Just because I don’t want to listen to you whingeing.’

‘I called because occasionally you have some decent advice.’

‘Right, and because I know Tony Mullen.’

‘ Sorry? ’ Thorne put down his sandwich.

‘Didn’t you know that?’

‘If I had, I would have called you straight away. How long have you known him?’

‘I worked with him in CID at Golders Green, twelve or thirteen years ago, something like that. He’d’ve been a DS then, probably, or maybe he was about to be made up. He was being bumped up to chief inspector round about the time I retired, I think.’

Thorne grabbed a scrap of paper, began to scribble notes. ‘So?’

‘So… he was decent enough, I suppose. Straight, as far as I could tell, but that doesn’t mean a great deal. I’ve got a lot of people wrong one way or another over the years.’

‘What about these two names then? Cotterill and Quinn.’ Thorne could hear classical music in the background. Chamberlain’s husband, Jack, was a keen listener.

‘I know it’s not what you want to hear, but I think Jesmond might be right. I can’t see either of those two as kidnappers.’ She paused. ‘I don’t suppose anybody mentioned Grant Freestone, did they?’

‘Should they have?’ Thorne wrote down the name.

‘Well, not everyone maybe, but I’m surprised his name hasn’t come up at all.’

‘I’m listening.’

‘Freestone sexually assaulted a number of kids, 1993 or ’94, round there. Boys and girls, I don’t think he was fussy. He kept them in a garage behind his flat.’

Kept them…

Thorne tried to blink away the image of a bag coming down over a boy’s face.

‘I was only on it briefly,’ Chamberlain said. ‘But Tony Mullen was very much involved, might even have been the arresting officer. It was common knowledge that things got nasty, that Freestone was making threats more or less from the moment he was nicked until he got sent down.’

‘Threats against Mullen?’

‘He might well have threatened others, but it’s Mullen I remember. I was in court one of the days and I can still see the look Freestone gave him: not aggressive exactly, but… Well, I can still remember it, so…’

‘Thanks, Carol. I’ll check it out.’

She said nothing for a second or two, then the music was turned down. ‘Let me do it.’

Slowly, Thorne underlined Grant Freestone’s name. ‘I thought, you know, there were cats to worm.’

‘I’m ignoring you. Seriously, Tom, why don’t you let me do some asking around and get back to you?’

Thorne could hear the change in Chamberlain’s voice immediately. The work she did for AMRU was irregular, and frustrating more often than not. He knew how much she relished feeling useful; how keen she was to get her teeth into something, into anything . He also knew that she still had a broad network of contacts and that she was bloody good at what she did. She might come up with a damn sight more than could be gleaned from any computer search.

‘Also, Jack’s had a dodgy back for years,’ she said. ‘He’s got some fantastic stuff he rubs on at night. I can bring it next time I see you.’

‘Thanks.’

‘So you’ve had a double result.’

Thorne thought about the video, the man with the syringe. He wondered if this could possibly be the same man whose face Carol Chamberlain still remembered from a courtroom a dozen years earlier. A man who’d taken children before.

With one hand, he reached for his discarded sandwich. The other put pen back to paper and began to scrawl.

Drew box after box after box around the man’s name.

He’d come to realise a long time ago that nearly everything came down to fish and ponds. To how big a fish you were and the size of the pond you swam around in. That and time, of course. He’d decided that time was a very weird thing to get your head round.

Obviously, he’d never read that book about it by the bloke in the wheelchair; the one who spoke through some machine he’d invented and sounded like a Dalek. He wouldn’t have understood it if he had, he knew that much, but he was pretty bloody sure that it would have been interesting. Time never ceased to amaze him, the way it messed you around. How you always got back from somewhere quicker than you got there. How the first week of your summer holiday seemed to last for ages and then the second week flew by and was all over before your skin had started peeling. How time dragged on and on when you were waiting for something to happen.

It didn’t seem like five minutes since Amanda had danced across and stuck her tits out at him. Since she’d been happy to let him get his end away for a few Bacardi Breezers and the promise of a favour. Five minutes… six months… whatever… and now they were shooting a kid full of drugs and sitting and waiting for something to happen.

To be honest, he’d been happier doing what they’d done before. It was easy – in and out – and if anyone got hurt it was only because they really asked for it. People who were stupid enough to get all heroic – with money that belonged to fucking Esso or whoever – deserved a kicking, as far as he was concerned. This was different, though. There was no guts in it, nothing to make you feel like you’d earned what you’d made. It felt shameful, like something only a pussy or a wanker would do. It was a weakling’s crime.

Maybe he’d feel different when the two of them were sitting somewhere warm, spending the money. Maybe then he could forget how they’d come by it. He hoped so, anyway.